


My soul and yours, they know each other well

by knightinbrightfeathers



Series: daemon au [1]
Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Daemons, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:09:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinbrightfeathers/pseuds/knightinbrightfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon's daemon took the longest time to settle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My soul and yours, they know each other well

Simon’s daemon took the longest time to settle that Baz had ever seen. Sometimes he’d see Erko in the same shape for a week, and he’d think, this is it. He’d get second hand excitement despite their rivalry, or he would, but Simon never got excited about that. Anything else, yes- ice cream on Sunday or a football match, Christmas or a day of sun in the middle of winter- but Simon regarded anything related to his daemon’s form settling with a sort of gentle calm. It wasn’t the fear that little children held, at ten or eleven or twelve, that they’d end up dull adults with turtles for daemons. It was something else.  
Even when they were friends, at the end of eight years of school, eight years of anger and despair and loss, even after Simon defeated the Humdrum, Erko still hadn’t settled. Baz’s Solestina was a peregrine, sharp eyed and loyal- had been for a year, since he decided in his heart that he would betray the Humdrum with his last breath. He’d had a plan and all, and Simon had reached out a hand and turned all of Baz’s dramatic last stands on their heads.  
Penelope worried, he knew, could tell even before he really got to know her. Prospero had settled as a hare one morning in sixth year, the same that Agatha had turned up at breakfast with Greshig as a sleek grey cat and a satisfied smile on both their faces. Come to think if it, Greshig and Prospero had probably both settled at night. It was a little-known fact that love and lust combined could cause a daemon’s form to settle, but Baz knew it. Sometimes he wondered if Simon- and then he stopped himself thinking about it.  
The night he finally gave in and kissed Simon, sure that he’d be oh so politely rejected, and Simon kissed back, they fucked like they’d been waiting nine years, which made no sense, since Baz had only been interested for the past six, tops.  
“Shut up, Baz,” Simon said against his neck, which Baz found patently unfair because he desperately wanted to kiss Simon’s neck but was all too aware of the risks. “I’ve been waiting for nine years, ok?”  
“Ok,” Baz said softly, and slid his hand into the back of Simon’s trousers.  
At the end of the night, Baz watched with eyes half lidded as Erko changed into a labrador and curled around Sol. In the morning, she was a rabbit, and Baz couldn’t find it in himself to mind. Erko gazed at him with the same kind of open, trusting look Simon had given him before he tangled his fingers in Baz’s hair and let Baz sink between his thighs.  
Erko was still unsettled when the Mage was declared unfit for office and unsettled when Simon went through intense training for everything he might need from anyone who could teach him and unsettled when he told Baz that apparently there was a ceremony for it.  
“Because it’ll determine what kind of Mage I’ll be,” he explained.  
Baz wanted to ask a hundred questions but ended up saying only, “You’ll be a great Mage. The greatest.”  
—-  
When the swearing in ceremony is almost over, the officiator, a woman with short hair and a pine marten daemon, holds out an altheometer. Simon places one hand on its surface, and Erko touches it with the tip of a long golden tiger’s tail.  
“Do you swear on each other to support in times of hardship, to guide in times of darkness, and to hold your duty sacred?” She speaks softly, richly, and her daemon murmurs along with her. Baz sucks in a breath. This is an important moment. For a moment he thinks she looks at him and the look in her eyes is knowing.  
Simon lowers his head a little, and Erko lifts hers. “We will.”  
“We hold you to that,” the woman and the pine marten say, and the whole crowd recites after them. Baz says it right with the crowd. He knows Simon would hold himself to that promise even if no one else did.  
Simon and Erko let go of the altheometer, and in that second Erko is an otter.  
Simon grins, incongruously boyish in the midst of such an important ceremony, and bends to press his face to Erko’ fur.  
Solestina puts her beak to Baz’s ear and whispers, “He’s a little rebel, isn’t he.”  
“I don’t think we know the half of it,” Baz whispers back, his voice swallowed by the sudden cheer rising from the crowd. Solestina hears it anyways.


End file.
